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t LI BRARY OF CONGRE SS, j 

[SMITHSONIAN DEPOSIT.] ^ 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.^ 



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L E T T E a 



LORD M A H N , 



BEING AN ANSWER 



UTS LETTER ADDRESSED TO THE EDITOR 



WASHINGTON'S WRITINGS, 



By JARED sparks, 



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BOSTON: 
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, 

1 N5'2. 



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cambuibge: 

ME TCAI. F AND COMPANY, 

PKINTF.RS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 



LETTER 



L O R D U A II O N 



My Lord, 
I HAVE had the honor to receive froiu you a 
copy of the Letter, which you have addressed to 
me as a Rejoinder to my Reply to certain stric- 
tures on the manner in which I had edited AVash- 
ington's "Writings. In that Reply, it was my 
main object to explain the plan and principles 
upon which it was originally designed that the 
work should be executed, and which, as I thought, 
you and others had strangely overlooked or mis- 
apprehended ; and also to show, that I had dis- 
charged the duties of an editor in strict conform- 
ity with that plan and those principles. While 
thus reviewing my past labors and vindicating my 
integrity of purpose, I had occasion to speak with 
pointed disapprobation of two or three serious 



charges in a recent volume of your History, which 
I knew to be founded in error, and w^hich I was 
wholly unable to reconcile with the courtesy and 
candor to be expected in a work from your pen. 

It is true, my Lord, as you suggest, I had not 
then read that volume, and, if I had done so, it 
could not in any degree have modified my opinion 
of the passages which I had seen, and to which 
my remarks were confined. I did not pretend to 
" answer your book," nor any part of it except 
the brief extracts here alluded to, which are in 
no way affected by the general contents of the 
work. If I had perused the volume, most assur- 
edly I should not have said, " a British historian 
might, perhaps, find something to commend in the 
result of my attempts"; referring to the efforts I 
had made, in the notes and illustrations, to cor- 
rect the erroneous opinions and false impressions, 
which had prevailed in America concerning the 
motives and designs of the British ]Ministry and 
military commanders during the w^ar. On this 
point, your recognition of the fact is explicit and 
full. 

You also say, " Mr. Sparks's own share in 
these notes and illustrations is written, not only 
with much ability, but in a spirit, on most points, 
of candor and fairness, and the whole collection 
is of great historical interest and importance." I 



trust that I am not insensible to your own candor 
and fairness in forming this estimate, nor to the 
liberality of the terms in which your judgment is 
expressed. 

But the questions at issue between us are of 
a different character, and require to be discussed 
by themselves. You expressed the opinion, that 
I « had printed no part of Washington's corre- 
spondence precisely as he wrote it," which opinion 
you conceived yourself "bound not to conceal." 
You also charged me with making additions to 
the original text, and unwarrantable alterations 
and omissions for the sake of embellishment ; 
leaving your readers to draw the conclusion, which, 
if they rested on your declarations alone, they 
could not but draw, that the editor was totally 
incompetent to the task he had undertaken. 

You now withdraw the charge of making ad- 
ditions, unquestionably the most important, but 
you say, " On other points I must declare myself 
prepared, though with all possible respect for your 
observations, to adhere to and maintain the opin- 
ions I advanced." The withdrawal of the first 
charge might close that part of the discussion at 
once'I if you did not still insist on your right to 
make it at the time, relying on authority which 
you then supposed to be entitled to confidence. 



TiCt us briefly consider this claim before we pro- 
ceed farther. 

The case stands thus. You found in one of 
Washington's letters, as printed by me, the pas- 
sage which here follows in italics ; " but is it pos- 
sible that any sensible nation npon earth can he 
imposed upon hy such a cohweh scheme or gauze 
covering ? " This passage did not appear in a copy 
of the same letter as printed by Mr. Reed. 
Whereupon you charged me, in a strain of sar- 
casm, (certainly unusual in your Lordship's com- 
positions, and therefore the more to be regarded,) 
with having " manufactured " it for the occasion, 
and by way of embellishment to the original text. 
Having ascertained that Washington actually wrote 
these words, absurd as they seemed to you, and 
that they had been omitted in the other printed 
copy by some accident, you now withdraw the 
charge. And you add, "• I will even go farther, 
and express my regret that, believing as I did the 
charge to be well founded and fully proved, I 
adopted a tone towards you, in one or two other 
passages of my History, different from that which 
I should have used had I thought you wholly 
free from this imputation." I am very ready to 
accept this as a fair recantation, though not so 
fully as I could have done, if its value were not 
diminished by the remarks with which it is con- 
nected. 



You maintain, that, under the circumstances, 
you were justified in making the charge, and in 
throwing out insinuations not less erroneous, and 
scarcely less offensive. You ask, " Having found 
these passages, I will put it to any candid per- 
son, and will include you. Sir, in tlie number, 
whether I was to blame for the conclusion I drew 
from them'? Had I not a right to say, that the 
' cobweb schemes or gauze coverings ' seemed to 
be of your own manufacture ? Had I not a right 
to intimate a suspicion, in one or two other parts 
of my History, whether such improvements had not 
extended farther ; whether the same manufactory 
had not been busy elsewhere X " As you put these 
questions to me personally, I must answer, that I 
can neither allow, nor conceive for a moment, that 
you had any such right. 

What -^as the real ground upon which you 
stood ? From fifteen words of suspected addition, 
and the supposed change of one other word, which 
you have since acknowledged is at least doubtful, 
you ventured to hazard the opinion, and to pro- 
mulgate it in an authoritative manner, that I had 
made like additions and changes, or, in your own 
phrase, "manufactured" them, throughout Wash- 
ington's correspondence ; an editorial license, "vvhich 
you properly designate as " not at all short of a 
literary forgery." Let me ask you, in all plain- 



ness, whether you had a right, upon any princi- 
ples of fair criticism, to draw so broad an infer- 
ence, implicating not more the literary ability 
and judgment of the editor than his integrity as 
a man, from such exceedingly narrow premises'? 

Every one knows how frequently errors result 
from accident, or through the mistakes of tran- 
scribers and printers, in publishing original man- 
uscripts. A moderate degree of forbearance might 
have inclined you to suspect an error from some 
of these sources, and cautioned you to wait till 
your proofs were better established. The event 
has shown that this course would have been 
more judicious, certainly more just. I must dis- 
sent, therefore, from your claim of right to charge 
me with manufacturing " cobweb schemes or gauze 
coverings."' 

We may examine this claim a little farther, as 
applied to " one or two other places " in your 
History, to which you allude. In one of these, 
after remarking in the text, that the Declaration 
of Independence "excited much less notice than 
might have been expected.*' you deem it proper 
to add in a note, " Washington, however, in 
his public letter to Congress, (unless Mr. Jared 
Sparks has improved this passage,) says, that the 
troops had testified ' their warmest approbation.' " 
In another place, referring to certain passages in 



!) 



Washinsfton-^ letters, you administer the caution 
to your readers, •' How far Mr. Sparks may have 
either i^arbled these passages, or suppressed others, 
I know not." And why should you not know ] 
You had before you a copy of Washington's ^' Of- 
ficial Letters to the Honorable American Congress." 
published in London more than half a century 
ago, in two volumes. This work you have more 
than once quoted. It contains the passages you 
cite in both these cases from letters to the Presi- 
dent of Congress, (Vol. L p. LS5, Vol. IL p. 2'23,) 
piinted in precisely the same words as in " Wash- 
ington's Writings." And yet, with these previous- 
ly printed letters in your hands, you seem not to 
have consulted them, but you were willing, with- 
out inquiry, to hazard these injurious imputations. 
Was this justiliable under any circumstances I 

As you have retracted the main charge, how- 
ever, I am so far content ; and I should have let 
it rest without comment, if you had not attempt- 
ed to vindicate your right to make it on such 
grounds as appear to me untenable. 

The two other charges, first, of corrections, and, 
secondly, of omissions, with an unwarrantable de- 
sign, although you allow them to be ■' far lesser 
charges," you undertake to sustain. 

Here it is to be remarked, that your observa- 

9 



10 



tions and strictures are presented under a double 
aspect. You state cases, and assign motives ; the 
former you endeavor to explain by the latter. 
You imagine that you have discovered two prom- 
inent motives, which, if your discovery is genuine, 
must have operated to pervert my judgment, and 
blunt my moral perceptions, through the whole 
course of my editorial labors. These motives are, 
first, a desire to save the dignity of AVashington, 
which led me sometimes to oniit epithets and 
phrases, and sometimes to substitute others more 
appropriate to his character than those written by 
himself ; and, secondly, a tenderness for the peo- 
ple of New England, moving me to leave out such 
parts of Washington's letters as bore hard upon 
their patriotism, courage, or public virtue. As 
these imputed motives form the groundwork of 
your specifications, I propose to analyze your 
proofs, which, from the manner in which you 
have stated and arranged them, must be done 
somewhat in detail. 

As a demonstration of the first motive, you be- 
gin by reproducing the phrases " flea-bite," " lame 
hand," " two of this kidney," and, last of all, 
" Old Put." These phrases have become so well 
known, by the labors of yourself and others, that 
the false elevation, to which Washington's fame 
]vad risen by their omission, may now be consid- 



11 



ered as fairly brought to its true level. While 
I admit the ott'encc in all its magnitude, and de- 
plore its consequences, I must repel the charge of 
sinister design, or of any felonious intent upon 
the truth of history. If I could have anticipated 
the lively concern which the loss of these words 
was to excite, not only in the minds of respec- 
table writers in the daily journals, but in that of 
an eminent historian, I cannot doubt that I should 
have weighed the matter more deliberately, and 
perhaps have come to a different decision. 

In the case of " Old Put," however, it should 
be remembered that this form of speech was not 
a conception of Washington ; he placed it within 
inverted commas, as copied from Mr. Reed's let- 
ter, to which he was writing an answer ; so that 
no characteristic trait of the writer was sacrificed 
by changing "Old Put" into "General Putnam." 
I mention this as a fact proper to be noticed, 
but not as an apology for making the change. 
Had the phrase been retained, a note would nat- 
urally have referred it to Mr. Heed's letter as its 
source. 

Now, my Lord, let these editorial delinquencies, 
if such you please to call them, be explained as 
they may, or go unexplained, I cannot resist the 
conviction, that, when you build on them the fol- 
lowing formal judgment, you are striving to mag- 



12 



nify a small thing into one of most unnatural 
dimensions. You inquire, " What other motive 
can by possibility be assigned for such corrections 
besides the one that I have stated 1 Is it not 
quite clear in these cases, that you were seeking 
to use language more conformable to Washing- 
ton's dignity of character than Washington could 
use for himself? We in England, with the high- 
est respect for the memory of that great man, 
believe that in his own true form he is sufficient- 
ly exalted. It is only some of his countrymen 
who desire to set him upon stilts." Is it your set- 
tled belief, that these four phrases were absolutely 
necessary to bring AVashington's dignity down to 
its just position in forming an estimate of his 
character? If you have perused the eleven vol- 
umes of his correspondence, and particularly his 
familiar letters and diaries in the twelfth volume, 
you have seen hundreds better suited to answer 
such a purpose. AVhat an absurdity in me, 
then, to undertake to shield W^ashington's dignity 
by suppressing half a dozen, or half a hundred 
words or phrases, while multitudes of others 
equally or more objectionable on this score spring 
up throughout the work. 

As to the " stilts," it becomes those of my coun- 
trymen, who may be obnoxious to your charge, to 
look to the matter. If there be any, who under- 



l;] 



take the hopeless task of raising- AA'asliington 
higher than he stands by the force of his own 
cliaracter, and tlie consent of mankind, it is bnt 
charity to remind them of their folly. As an 
apolog-y for tlieir delusion, however, it should not 
be forgotten, that tlie foible of exalting great men 
by exaggerated praise, or, in your more expressive 
language, by " setting them upon stilts," is not 
peculiar to anv countrv. Even in Enijland the 
pens of respectable authors arc sometimes betrayed 
into extravagances of this sort. English histori- 
ans are not always free from them. 

We come now^ to another class of omissions, 
for which you assign the same motive ; passages 
containing " the vehement language which Wash- 
ington at this period applies in familiar corre- 
spondence to the English;' I will take your 
examples in the order in which you arrange 
them. 

You complain that a passage is omitted, in 
which Lord Dunmore is called an " arch-traitor to 
the rights of humanity." If you had examined a 
little more closely, you would have seen that 
about one third of the whole letter was omitted, 
not because it contained these words, but as beino- 

o 

in substance a repetition of what was written 
nearly at the same time to Richard Henry Eee 
on the same subject, which is printed in full. 



u 



Washington, in his letter to Lee, says of Lord 
Dunmore, " Motives of resentment actuate his 
conduct, to a degree equal to the total destruction 
of the colony." (Writings, Vol. IIL p. 216.) 
Would " arch-traitor " have added to the force of 
this description, and was it worth while to ref)eat 
a paragraph for the sake of inserting it 1 

Again, you take it amiss that the world should 
be deprived of Washington's opinion of " the 
English people," when he speaks of them as mak- 
ing " instruments of tyranny " of the Scotch, and 
as a " nation which seems lost to every sense of 
virtue, and to those feelings which distinguish a 
civilized people from the most barbarous savages." 
And you add, " You deemed, no doubt, that such 
phrases were not perfectly consistent with Wash- 
ington's serene and lofty character. Yet I, as a 
Briton, can read them without resentment, and 
should certainly have retained them." And un- 
questionably so should I, if the same sentiments 
were not advanced on several other occasions in 
language not less direct and strong. 

I will cite two instances. Turn to a letter to 
General Gage, written in answer to a discourteous 
one from that officer, in which Washington says, 
" Whether our virtuous citizens, whom the hand 
of tyranny has forced into arms to defend their 
wives, their children, and their property, or the 



1. 



mercenary instruments of" lawless domination, av- 
arice, and revenge, best deserve the ap[)ellation of 
rebels, and the punishment of that cord, -vvhicli 
your affected clemency has forborne to inflict," &c. 
(Vol. III. p. G5.) Again, in a letter to Mr. Heed, 
speaking of the measures adopted in England after 
the battle of Bunker's Hill ; " I would tell them, 
[the ^linisters,] that we had long and ardently 
sought for reconciliation upon honorable terms, 
that it had been denied us, that all our attempts 
after peace had proved abortive, and had been 
grossly misrepresented, that we had done every 
thing which could be expected from the best of 
subjects, that the spirit of freedom rises too high 
in us to submit to slavery, and that, if nothing else 
would satisfy a tyrant and his diabolical ministry, 
we are determined to shake off all connection with 
a state so unjust and unnatural." (p. 2S6.J 

Are these expressions more " consistent with 
Washington's serene and lofty character," than 
those which you have quoted as missing *? Do 
they differ from them in meaning or spirit? Are 
they not enough for a trial of your equanimity and 
good-nature as a Briton "? If not, others of a simi- 
lar purport may be found in various parts of the 
work. And yet you accuse me of having " omitted 
all the vehem(>nt language, which Washington at 
til is period applies to the English." 



IG 



You go on, under the same head, to cite anotli- 
er passage. In a letter to INIr. Reed, speaking of 
the evacuation of Boston, Washington describes 
the miserable condition of the Loyalists, who left 
their homes and went on ship-board with the 
British troops. " One or two of them," he writes, 
"have committed, what it would have been happy 
for mankind if more of them had done long ago, 
the act of suicide." A long paragraph including 
these lines was left out, although your mode of 
citing them leaves the impression that these alone 
were selected for omission. 

Your comment follows. " For this harshness I 
can ofier no excuse. I am not astonished at your 
desire to conceal it." Will you be astonished to 
learn, that it was not concealed at all ] If you 
had turned back only four pages, and looked into 
the letter preceding the one from which the above 
sentence is omitted, you would have found these 
words ; " One or two have done, what a great 
number ought to have done long ago, committed 
suicide. By all accounts, there never was a more 
miserable set of beings than these wretched crea- 
tures now are." (Vol. III. p. 343.) On a mo- 
ment's comparison you will observe, that the 
paragraph containing the passage, which you quote 
from a letter to Mr. Eeed, is almost a literal 
copy of one which was written the day before 



17 



to anotlier person, and which is printed in its 
phicc. Hence the omission. ^^'onkl )on com- 
mend it as a skilful piece of editorsliip in a 
work professedly consisting of selections from a 
vast correspondence, to print parts of two suc- 
cessive letters, embodying the same thoughts in 
nearly the same language, because they happened 
to be addressed to different individuals 1 I be- 
lieve not. 

I have thus reviewed all the examples adduced 
by you as proofs of the first motive, that of ex- 
alting, or protecting, Washington's dignity. I will 
make no further comment than simply to add, 
that I neither admit such a motive, nor recog- 
nize in your course of argument any thing, which, 
rightly considered, can give countenance to your 
conjecture. 

AVe will now proceed to the second motive, 
the alleged desire to conceal or disguise Washing- 
ton's opinions of the New England people, and of 
the character of certain individuals among them. 

In opening this subject, your words are ; " My 
main complaint against you, and your principal 
allegations in defence, turn, however, on the omis- 
sions which you have made as to points in which 
neither Washington's character, nor yet his style, 
are in any degree involved." This being your 
:3 



1« 



" main complaint," it calls for a particular con- 
sideration. The grounds of it are thus stated in 
your own words. 

" Where Washington speaks of certain shippers 
from New England as ' our rascally privateers- 
men,' you leave out the epithet. — Where he speaks 
of certain soldiers from Connecticut as showing 
' a dirty mercenary spirit,' you leave out the for- 
mer epithet. — Where he complains of the inad- 
equate supply of money to his camp from the 
Provincial Assemblies, you suppress his concluding 
exclamation ; ' Strange conduct this ! ' — One New 
England officer is not, it seems, to be mentioned 
by Washington with a touch of irony as ' the noble 
Colonel Enos,' and that epithet, likewise, is to 
be expunged. — Of another New England officer, 
Colonel Hancock, you will not allow Washington 
to express his suspicion with respect to a letter 
of his own, that ' Colonel Hancock read what I 
never wrote.' — Of a third New England officer 
you will not allow Washington to observe, ' I 
have no opinion at all of Wooster's enterprising 
genius.' — Of a fourth. General Frye, you will 
not allow us to hear that ' at present he keeps 
his room, and talks learnedly of emetics and 
cathartics. For my own part I see nothing but 
a declining life that matters him.' — Nor are we 
to have the amusing description of a fifth New 



19 

England officer, General "Ward, avIio first resigned 
on account of his ill health, and then retracted 
his resignation, ' on account, as he says, of its 
being disagreeable to some of the officers. "Who 
those officers are, I have not heard. They have 
been able, no doubt, to convince him of his 
mistake, and that his health "will allow him to 
be alert and active.' — You will not suffer Wash- 
ington to say of Massachusetts, as compared with 
other States, ' there is no nation under the sun 
that I ever came across pays greater adoration 
to money than they do,' — You will not suffer 
him to say, when New England had fliiled to 
supply him with the gunpowder he needed, ' we 
have every thing but the thing ready for an of- 
fensive operation.' Here you think fit to omit 
the three most important words, ' but tlic thing,' 
by which Washington, in a becoming soldier-phrase, 
meant powder, and by this omission you have en- 
tirely altered the representation of his circumstances 
which he intended to convey." 

After this summary, you ask the following 
questions. " Can any dispassionate reader be in 
doubt as to the course you have pursued? Can 
he be in doubt as to the motive which, uncon- 
sciously, perhaps, has been working in your mind"? 
Is it not qvute clear, that in these omissions you 
have been desirous to strike out, as far as possi- 



20 

ble, every word or phrase that could possibly 
touch the local fame of the gentlemen at Boston, 
or wound in any manner the feelings of New 
England ? " 

This array of specifications shall now be exam- 
ined, with particular reference to the motive which 
you assign for them. 

You are concerned, in the first place, that the 
privateers-men should not hold their appropriate 
place in the history of the time, after being de- 
prived of an epithet. Surely your anxiety would 
have been at an end, if you had cast your eye 
over a letter from Washington to Congress, writ- 
ten two weeks afterwards, in which he says, " The 
plague, trouble, and vexation I have had with the 
crews of all the armed vessels, are inexpressible. 
I do believe there is not on earth a more disor- 
derly set. Every time they come into port, we hear 
of nothing but mutinous complaints." (Vol. III. 
p. 187.) Is not this as graphic a sketch as you 
could desire 1 Would calling them " rascally " 
throw any darker shade over the picture ? Where, 
then, is the attempt to conceal the misdeeds of 
the New England privateers-men 1 

Of the next epithet, little needs be said. The 
difference between a " dirty mercenary spirit," and 
a " mercenary spirit," historically or morally con- 
sidered, may be decided by the acuteness of those 



•Jl 



who delight in nice distinctions. The less dis- 
cerning might venture to say that the epithet is 
redundant. In some sense, at least, every thing 
mercenary is " dirty." I am willing to consign 
it to the fair interpretation of the critics, without 
tiie remotest wish to gloss over the shameful con- 
duct of the Connecticut troops. 

I cannot but be impressed, however, with the 
degree of conse(iuence you attach to this word, 
even with its expiatory modification. You have 
brought it twice into your History, and on one 
occasion with a note in the margin, informing 
your readers that it is among the " epithets care- 
fully excluded from Mr. Sparks's compilation." I 
am bound to confess that I can see no harm in 
the epithet, and I shall not defend the omission. 
"Whether it was omitted by accident or intention- 
ally is more than my recollection will now enable 
me to declare. I would only be strenuous in 
contending, that the guilty Connecticut troops have 
gained nothing by its absence. 

The " strange conduct " you mention, as an 
improper omission dictated by local predilections, 
has drawn you into an error scarcely less strange. 
You say Washington " complains of the inade- 
c^uate supply of money from the Provincial As- 
semblies," and then infer that the exclamation 
was omitted because these Assemblies belonged to 



22 



New England. If you had attended to the whole 
sentence, you would have discovered that Wash- 
ington was not speakmg of the Assemblies, but 
complaining of the Continental Congress for not 
signing their paper currency with more prompt- 
ness, while he was so much embarrassed for the 
want of money in the army. Your charge of a 
motive should therefore be withdrawn in this in- 
stance, however you may account for the disap- 
pearance of the exclamation. 

That there may be no suspicion of a fraud 
upon history here, I will direct your attention to 
a letter touching the same subject written to a 
member of Congress a few days before the date 
of your quotation, and printed in its place. In 
that letter Washington says, " For God's sake 
hurry the signers of money, that our wants may 
be supplied. It is a very singular case, that their 
signing cannot keep pace with our demands." (Vol. 
III. p. 173.) Whether this "very singular case" 
amounts to more or less than " strange conduct," 
may be submitted to the calm judgment of any 
one, who has leisure to analyze the merits of the 
question. 

In regard to " the noble Colonel Enos," I can 
see no good reason why the ironical epithet should 
have crept out. I should hesitate to deny that it 
was by my consent, yet I must affirm, that, hap- 



2:] 



pen as it niiolit, it Avas by no deep desion to 
shelter a New England officer from his just de- 
serts, since I have stated the particulars of his 
case in a lono- note to one of Washington's let- 
ters. (Voh III. p. ICA.) lie left Arnold on his 
perilous march through the wilderness to Quebec, 
and brought back his men. He was tried by a 
court-martial, and acquitted on the proof of a 
want of provisions. But pubhc opinion was less 
indulgent, and hinted a suspicion of his firmness, 
if not of his valor. All this is fully explained 
to the readc^r, and the loss of the epithet, how- 
ever much to be lamented, has certainly not con- 
tributed to screen the Colonel's character. 

You have unaccountably mistaken the purport 
and drift of the next extract. You call Hancock 
"another New England officer." It is true, he 
had been a colonel of militia before the war, a 
station from which he was somewhat unceremo- 
niously dismissed by General Gage. It will aston- 
ish most readers to be told, that he was at this 
time an officer hi the New England army, since 
he had been for more than seven months Presi- 
dent of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. 
Your abridgment of the passage also leads to 
an erroneous conclusion. ^Ir. Pxeed was in Phil- 
adelphia, and, in an answer to one of his letters, 
AVashington wrote, " I do not very well under- 



24 



stand a paragraph in your letter, which seems to 
be taken from one of mine to Colonel Hancock, 
expressive of the unwillingness of the Connecticut 
troops to he deemed Continental. If you did not 
misconceive what Colonel Hancock read, he read 
what I never wrote, as there is no expression in 
any of my letters, that I can either recollect or 
find, that has a tendency that way." From this 
passage you infer that Washington intended to 
" express his suspicion," that President Hancock 
did actually pretend to read what he had never 
written, thereby inventing and promulgating a false- 
hood. 

This would mdeed be a formidable charge, but 
nothing is more clear, taking the whole passage m 
connection, than that Washington meant to express 
an opinion, in strong language, that Mr. Reed had 
misconceived what had been read. AVhatever rea- 
son may be assigned for the omission, therefore, it 
could not have been a desire to protect the Pres- 
ident of Congress from so injurious a suspicion, 
which certainly did not exist in the mind of 
Washington. 

Next comes the unfortunate General Wooster ; 
unfortunate in having been an old man, with 
a patriot's heart, when he would gladly have re- 
called the energy and youthful vigor, which he had 
bravely expended in former wars ; but not un- 



25 



fortunate in having fallen in battle, a few months 
after the date to which you refer, while fighting 
for his country's freedom. Washington had " no 
opinion of his enterprising genius," alluding to 
the chief command which he then held in Can- 
ada. Surely he had not, as qualifying him for 
such a post. He expressed the same sentiments in 
other letters, which are printed in tlie work. 

For instance ; " General Wooster, I am informed, 
is not of such activity as to press through difficul- 
ties, with which that service is environed." (Vol. 
III. p. 119.) And again, after Wooster had gen- 
erously consented to serve under General IMont- 
gomery during the campaign, Washington writes 
to General Schuyler ; " INIy fears are at an end, 
as he acts in a subordinate capacity." (p. 143.) 
In what respect does the sense of these expressions 
differ from that of the sentence you cite, and where- 
in does the omission contribute to disguise Wash- 
ington's opinion " of a third New England officer " 1 
Besides, more than half the letter containing this 
sentence is omitted, as in other cases, to avoid repe- 
tition ; and it is obvious upon the slightest inspec- 
tion, that the reason for the omission was in no 
degree connected wdth what is said of General 
Wooster, or of any other individual. 

Your reference to General Frye may be allowed 
to stand on its own merits. But your readers would 
4 



2G 



have been convinced that the charge of having 
sought in this instance to protect the reputation of 
a New England officer was groundless, if you had 
extended the quotation to the words printed in near 
connection with it. Washington there says, " I 
have heard of no other valiant son of New England 
waiting promotion, since the advancement of Frye, 
who has not, and I doubt will not, do much service 
to the cause." (Vol. III. p. 310.) Would the point 
of these caustic expressions be made sharper by 
the omitted sentence? 

As the name of this gentleman has been thus 
dragged into notice, it is but justice to say a word 
more in relation to him. He had been a good offi- 
cer in two wars, was at the capture of Louisburg in 
1745, always commanded the respect of his country- 
men, and was raised to the rank of Major-General 
of the Massachusetts forces five days before the bat- 
tle of Bunker's Hill. He accepted his Continental 
commission with apparent reluctance, and held it 
but three months. That he " kept his room, and 
talked learnedly of emetics and cathartics," is highly 
probable ; that the maladies of age were upon him 
is certain ; but that history required these personal 
traits, common to infirm old men, and totally uncon- 
nected with his public character, to be commemo- 
rated in a formal manner, is at least questionable. 
As it is a matter of opinion, however, you may be 



')7 



disposed to look upon it in a different lic^lit, to 
which I shall not ohjcct, saving the motive by 
which you have imagined me to be influenced. 

Similar remarks may be made in regard to (len- 
eral A^'ard. I would again observe, that you fre- 
quently quote a single sentence, as if it constituted 
the whole of an omission, and then infer a motive 
or conjecture a reason as appertaining to that sen- 
tence only, whereas the fragment quoted by you is 
forced out of its place as an integral part of a par- 
agraph, or several paragraphs taken collectively, 
which have been omitted for general reasons very 
remote from the one you assign. You must per- 
ceive that this is not a fair way of presenting the 
case, because the reader is deceived by it into a be- 
lief, that the passage Mas excluded with some special 
aim, when in reality it was not in the mind of the 
editor, except in connection with the whole. Your 
extract respecting General AVard is of this descrip- 
tion. It occurs in the body of a long paragraph, 
w^hich, with several others in the same letter, was 
omitted as containing unimportant matter, or a rep- 
etition of what is printed in other places. It is the 
letter in which the suicidal Loyalists are mentioned. 
I cannot charge myself, therefore, with having had 
any design in excluding this sentence, although, 
upon a revision, I think the part of the letter em- 
bracing it was properly omitted. 



28 



I shall forbear to examine the grounds of the 
" amusing description of a fifth New England offi- 
cer," or to inquire into the causes of his resignation, 
the state of his health, or the arguments used to re- 
tain him in the service. We should not lose sight 
of justice, however, in attempting to conjecture his 
motives. General Ward had served with credit in 
the preceding war ; and that he stood very high in 
public confidence is proved by the fact, that, after 
the affair at Lexington, he became Commander-in- 
chief of the New England troops, and, when the 
army was adopted by Congress as a Continental 
army, he was appointed second in command to 
Washington. No one has ventured to insinuate, 
that he did not perform the duties of these high 
stations with honor, fidelity, and a steady devotion 
to the cause of his country. 

What local or personal incidents had taken place 
while Washington and these two officers were to- 
gether in the camp at Cambridge, which induced the 
former, in his private and confidential correspond- 
ence afterwards, to indulge a sarcastic humor in 
speaking of them, it would be in vain now to in- 
quire. But you charge me with a design to conceal 
the facts themselves from the public eye. You are 
doubtless acquainted with a work, entitled " Me- 
moirs of Charles Lee," published sixty years ago in 
London, and several times reprinted in the United 



29 



States. In that volume you Avill fiiul a private letter 
from Washington, expressing the same ideas con- 
cerning these officers, in the same tone, and almost 
the same language, as in the letters from which 
you quote (Lend, edition, p. 254). Plow, then, 
could I have been so far blinded as to hope to sup- 
press f\icts, which had been before the world more 
than half a century, embodied in a popular Mork, 
widely circulated, and accessible to every reader ? 

In Avhat is said of " adoration to money," you 
again mistake in applying the censure to ]\Iassa- 
chusetts. Washington is speaking generally of the 
men of New England, and complaining of their 
tardiness in coming forward to enlist into the ser- 
vice. For this tardiness he gives a good reason in 
the same sentence, which you have overlooked. 
" The Congress expect, I believe, that I should do 
more than others ; for, whilst they compel me to 
enlist without a bounty, they give forty dollars to 
others, which will, I expect, put an end to our 
enlistments." This exorbitant love of money, then, 
charged upon them in the vexation of the moment, 
was manifested by their backwardness to serve for 
smaller pay, than they understood to be allowed 
for the same service in other parts of the country. 

But if you are really concerned lest history 
should suffer by any forbearance of mine towards 
the New England people in this omission, T beg 



80 



you will turn to a letter in "Washington's Writ- 
ings," in which he says, " Such a dearth of public 
spirit, and such want of virtue, such stock-jobbing, 
and fertility in all the low arts to obtain advan- 
tages of one kind or another in this great change 
of military arrangement, I never saw before, and 
pray God's mercy that I may never be witness to 
again." (Vol. III. p. 178.) You are not ignorant 
of this passage, since you have inserted it in your 
history, with the same error of applying it to 
Massachusetts. 

AVe have at length arrived at the last specifica- 
tion in your list. Washington wrote, " We have 
every thing but the thing ready for an offensive 
operation." How the three little words, " but the 
thing," escaped from their place, I cannot explain, 
I presume it was by an accident. I can see no 
possible objection to them. The collocation of 
the Avords is such, that they might easily be over- 
looked by a transcriber or printer. The impor- 
tance you attach to them, however, as conveying 
a "representation of Washington's circumstances," 
is much overrated. If there is one thing more 
than another insisted upon in his letters during 
this period, it is his want of powder. Expressions 
like the following are of perpetual recurrence. 
" No quantity, however small, is beneath notice " 
(Vol. III. p. 47) ; " not sufficient to give twenty- 



five musket cartridges to a man " (p. 70) ; " our 
want of powder is inconceivable" (p. 215). It is 
evident, therefore, that the three words are not of 
the least importance as indicating the condition of 
the army in regard to powder. 

Moreover, you mistake in supposing Washing- 
ton to complain of New England for having 
" failed to supply him with the gunpowder he 
needed." His complaint is not directed against 
New England alone. It was the business of Con- 
gress to furnish the Continental army with pow- 
der. 1'here was little powder in the country, and 
of course little could be had. The manufacture 
of the article was not yet established. The New 
England Colonies, as well as the others, supplied 
all they could obtain. Ships were sent for it to 
France and the West Indies, but it took time for 
ships to sail across the ocean and return. 

In another place you censure the omission of 
" a curious story told by AVashington relative to 
his want of powder." And what mystery does 
this curious story reveal ? Nothing more nor less 
than a blunder of a Committee of Supplies in 
making a return of the quantity of powder on 
hand. " I was particular in my inquiries," says 
Washington, " and found that the Committee of 
Supplies, not being sufficiently acquainted with 
the nature of a return, or misapprehending my 



32 



request, had sent in an account of all the ammu- 
nition which had been collected by the Province, 
so that the report included not only what was 
on hand, but what had been spent." The blunder 
was of course accidental, and was necessarily de- 
tected at once, so that no possible consequence 
could follow from it. 

You deem this story so important, that you 
have inserted it in the text of your History, and 
carefully reminded your readers in a note, that it 
" is omitted in Mr. Sparks's edition." And you 
can discover no other motive for the omission, 
than an anxiety to conceal from the world the 
ignorance or misapprehension of a Massachusetts 
committee, although the whole passage is con- 
tained in the " Official Letters to Congress," (Vol. 
I. p. 21,) long before published, and in your hands. 
Nor do you intimate that the story stands in the 
midst of more than two pages, which were omit- 
ted obviously because they treat of local and tem- 
porary details of little moment. 

All the cases in your list have now been ex- 
amined ; but there are others adduced by you, 
which, in your opinion, show " a desire to deal 
as tenderly as possible with any thing or any body 
that has the honor to be connected with New 
England." These will receive due consideration. 



Washington had spoken of the "scandalous 
conduct of a great number of the Connecticut 
troops." The word " scandalous " has disappeared. 
How it happened I know not, and assuredly I 
am not disposed to defend the omission ; nor is 
it one which I should intentionally have made. I 
observe that it is also wanting in the " Official 
Letters." (Vol. I. p. oG.) In both cases it may per- 
haps be fairly ascribed to accident. Yet I cannot 
agree that the Connecticut troops would have any 
reason to rejoice in its absence. Considering the 
manner in which the conduct of some of them is 
described on different occasions, in other letters 
printed in the work, no one can doubt that it 
was scandalous, even without the aid of this ap- 
propriate epithet. 

Again, you remark, "Nor arc we to be told of 
the Boston troops, that they were once extremely 
uneasy, and almost mutinous, for the want of pay " ; 
and you ask the question, " Is it, or is it not, impor- 
tant to show how far Washington, at that period, 
could rely upon all liis soldiers ? " To which I 
reply, first, the sentence quoted by you makes part 
of a paragraph, the whole of which was omitted, 
with several others in the same letter, as contain- 
ing unimportant details. Washington writes, " Hav- 
ing heard that the troops at Boston are extremely 
uneasy and almost mutinous for the want of pay, 
5 



34 

(several months' being now due,) I must take the 
liberty to repeat the question contained in my letter 
of the 5th ultimo"; and then he asks, "Whether 
the money is to be sent from hence by the Pay- 
master-General, or some person subordinate to him 
to be appointed for that purpose 1 " It is obvious 
that he speaks of the uneasiness and " almost " 
mutinous spirit of the troops, not as an alarming 
circumstance, but with a view of hastening forward 
the money for their payment. I may also remark, 
that the omission could not have been out of any 
delicacy towards the New England troops, as is 
obvious from what is printed in another place, as 
follows ; " The greater part of the troops are in a 
state not far from mutiny, upon the deduction from 
their stated allowance," (Vol. III. p. 104,) and from 
the fact, that the paragraph containing the omitted 
sentence is to be found in the " Official Letters." 
(Vol. I. p. 153.) 

Secondly, as Washington was at that time in 
New York with the main army, it could have 
had very little influence upon his movements, or 
the military affairs of the country, if the detach- 
ment left in Boston had all mutinied and gone 
home. It was the military chest upon which he 
had first and mainly to rely ; when that was full, 
his reliance on the soldiers was sufficiently safe; 
and in this respect I suppose these troops resem- 



35 



bled those of all countries. It is not probable that 
any commander could long rely on troops under 
voluntary enlistment, "who were not paid. 

You next bring up the case of two unworthy 
captains, Parker and Gardiner, who had been 
broken by a court-martial, the one for frauds upon 
his men, and the other for running away from his 
guard on an alarm. The paragraph conveying this 
intelligence to the President of Congress was omit- 
ted, and you regard the omission as indicative of 
New England partiality, and censurable because it 
was "important to show how far Washington at 
that period could rely upon all his officers." Do 
you really look upon the ill conduct of two mili- 
tia officers as so momentous an affair'? Or would 
you infer from it, that the other officers were to 
be suspected of cowardice and fraud, and that it 
indicated the general state of the army ? 

Again, you lay great stress on an omission of a 
similar kind in relation to Captain Callender, not 
in a " confidential letter," as you call it, for all 
AVashington's official letters to the President of 
Congress were intended for that body, were read 
in open session, and usually referred to a commit- 
tee. Washington wrote from the camp at Cam- 
bridge ; " Upon my arrival, and since, some com- 
plaints have been preferred against officers for cow- 
ardice in the late action on Bunker's Hill. Though 



3t; 



there were several strong circumstances, and a very 
general opinion against them, none have been con- 
demned except a Captain Callender of the artillery, 
who was immediately cashiered. I have been sor- 
ry to find it an uncontradicted fact, that the prin- 
cipal failure of duty that day was in the officers, 
though many of them distinguished themselves by 
their gallant behavior." This paragraph, in imme- 
diate connection with others narrating local inci- 
dents, was probably omitted because it contained 
no fact or circumstance, which was not perfectly 
well known, and which had not been repeatedly 
canvassed and discussed by American writers. 

You ask, " Is not this a passage, which every 
future historian of Bunker's Hill has a right to 
be apprised of, and ought to bear in mind 1 " 
True, and he must be an historian of marvellous- 
Iv little reading on this subject, who has not been 
apprised of all it contains from various sources. 
The facts of Captain Callender's unhappy case, and 
indeed of nearly every other occurrence in that 
battle, are as familiar to the readers of American 
history, as that Prescott commanded in the re- 
doubt, and Warren fell on the field. 

Moreover, all the particulars relating to the 
points in question were published more than thir- 
ty vears before " Washington's Writings " came 
from the press. Have you ever read Hubley's 



" History of tlie American Revolution " ? Probably 
not, but, if you had taken that trouble, you would 
have seen an account of the proceedings of the 
courts-martial on the trials of these three delin- 
quent captains, (\'ol. I. pp. f352, 483,) published 
in detail from ^^'ashing•ton's " Orderly-Books." Let 
me add, also, that, if you had extended your re- 
searches to the Appendix to the third volume 
of " A\'ashington's Writings," (p. 4(S9,) you might 
there have read a letter from the eminent patriot, 
Joseph Hawley, speaking with the utmost freedom 
of some of the officers at that time, as being " very 
equivocal in regard to courage." You would like- 
wise have found a statement of Captain Callender's 
case (p. 490), with the additional facts, that he 
immediately afterwards joined the army as a vol- 
unteer, and, by signal acts of courage on several 
occasions, nobly redeemed the character he had 
lost at Bunker's Hill. 

It should be observed, also, that examples of 
misbehaving officers were not peculiar to the New 
England troops. The "Orderly-Books" prove, that 
they happened throughout the war in the lines of 
the army from the different States, as they doubt- 
less happen in all armies consisting of undisci- 
plined troops recently drawn from the mass of the 
people. They are comparatively obscure and trivial 
incidents, having no influence upon the train of 



38 



events, and I could not deem it a duty to encum- 
ber the work witli them to the exclusion of val- 
uable materials. AYhatever distinction may be 
made between the three cases you have noticed 
and others of the same class, I am constrained 
to believe that the importance you attach to these 
omissions is exaggerated, since not a single histor- 
ical fact has been suppressed or disguised, and 
that your imagination has taken an extraordinary 
flight after a motive, when you ascribe it to a 
" desire to deal as tenderly as possible with any 
thing and any body that has the honor to be con- 
nected with New England." 

You repeat the charge, before preferred in your 
History, that I had somewhere and somehow sup- 
pressed a passage containing a remonstrance from 
Washington to Congress for not fulfilling the Con- 
vention of Saratoga. You quote Mr. Adolphus as 
saying, in his " History of England," that " Wash- 
ington remonstrated with force and firmness 
against this national act of dishonor " ; and you 
add, " I found no such remonstrance as Mr. Adol- 
phus mentions. Am I, then, to be blamed if I 
feel, or, if feeling, I express my suspicion that 
these words of remonstrance also may have been 
among the passages which you suppress ■? " Blame, 
my Lord, is of various gradations, and how far it 
may be applied to you in this instance I shall 



:JI) 



forbear to decide. I cannot but express surprise, 
however, that you shouhl be willing- to venture 
such a charge, or utter such a suspicion, till you 
liad verified the authority upon which Mr. Aclolphus 
spoke, especially after your attention had been 
called to this point by an able writer in the North 
American Review. INIr. Adolphus cites the Lon- 
don edition of Washington's Official liCtters ("\^ol. 
II. p. 266). Have you examined that referenced 
If so, you have found nothing Avliich bears in the 
remotest degree upon this subject ; and, moreover, 
if you search the two volumes through, you will 
be equally unsuccessful. I have seen no evidence 
that Washington ever made such a remonstrance, 
and must deny that he ever did so, till something 
in the shape of positive proof sliall be produced. 

I respect the memory of INlr. Adolphus ; I have 
a grateful recollection of his personal civilities ; I 
have been a witness of his arduous labors at an 
advanced age in procuring materials for the last 
and improved edition of his History; and I have 
entire confidence in his veracity ; but I cannot 
yield assent to his unsupported declaration in a 
case like this, of which he could know nothing 
except from the testimony of others. Notwith- 
standing his assiduity in collecting facts, the parts 
of his History touching the American war abound 
in important errors. Some of these, relatino- to 



40 



events in America, were perhaps unavoidable ; but 
it is difficult to account for his saying of the pas- 
sage of the Stamp Act, that " no warning voice 
raised itself in the House of Commons, but the 
measure was suffered to pass through in silence," 
when it is unquestionable that there were two or 
three debates on the subject. Such men as Barre, 
Sir William Meredith, Conway, and Beckford, 
raised their voices loudly against the Act, and 
about fifty members voted in the negative. 

As you have selected this case as one of the 
" particular omissions," which, in your mind, " tend 
to cast a shade of distrust over the entire work," 
I hope you will allow the shade to pass away, till 
you can make it appear, by at least a shadow of 
proof, that there is an omission. 

I have now gone through with the process, 
which I fear your Lordship will have found some- 
what tedious, of examining in detail every case 
you have produced in vindication of your various 
charges and suspicions. I have shown, first, that 
in every instance in which you have supposed facts 
to be suppressed or concealed, these facts are to be 
found in other parts of the work, or in other 
works long well known to the public ; secondly, 
that you have frequently selected short sentences, 
or fragments of sentences, and conjectured some 



41 



special design for their omission, when in reality 
they were included in a paragraph, or larger por- 
tion of a letter, omitted for reasons in no manner 
relating to the purport of these sentences; tliirdly, 
that your main charge of a personal motive, prompt- 
ing me to protect Washington's dignity, and the 
good name of the people of New England, at the 
expense of historical justice, is not sustained by 
facts, reasonable inferences, or probability. 

On this last topic something more may be said. 
You seem apprehensive that your own motives 
may be misunderstood, and hence you endeavor to 
guard them by the following remarks. 

" I should be sorry if it were thought that I de- 
sired, by the production of such omitted phrases, 
to deny the unquestionable merits of the New 
England States in their llevolutionary War. I3ut 
I consider it requisite to prove — and the more so 
since, as I venture to think, the fact is too often 
overlooked on your side of the Atlantic — that 
their cause, like every other cause, had its dark 
as well as its bright side. And if you, as the 
editor of Washington's Correspondence, are shown 
to leave out systematically those facts or those 
opinions by which the dark side is to be proved, 
then I, for my part, must continue to maintain 
that you, Sir, have, according to my former words, 
'tampered with the truth of history.* " 
6 



4-2 



How far my countrymen, as well out of New Eng- 
land as in it, may think themselves obliged by this 
endeavor to show them " the dark as well as bright 
side" of their local history, I am not prepared to 
say. I should not be surprised, however, if, from 
the self-esteem in which they are sometimes thought 
not to be deficient, they should imagine themselves 
as well informed on a subject of this kind, as they 
could hope to be by any light imparted to them 
from the other side of the Atlantic. In short, I 
think you mistake in supposing, that any intelli- 
gent man in America is not as well acquainted with 
the dark as with the bright side of the Revolu- 
tionary measures in all parts of the country. It 
would be a waste of labor, in my opinion, to at- 
tempt to teach them any new lessons on these char- 
acteristics of their history. 

In the above extract you insinuate, nay, you al- 
most declare, that I have " systematically " left out 
facts and opinions, with the express design of per- 
verting the testimony of history. Has this been 
proved by the examples you have produced^ On 
the contrary, has it not been shown in every in- 
stance, that the facts and opinions left out are re- 
corded in other places, and well known 1 Are 
you sure, my Lord, that you are perfectly candid 
in speaking thus? Why use this equivocal lan- 
o-Liao-e? Whv sav that, "if" I have " svstemati- 



43 



cally " done so, then I have " tampered with the 
truth of history " I It may be that you and I do 
not attach the same meaning to this sentence. 
To tamper with truth of any kind is, in my appre- 
hension, a highly criminal act. It implies a de- 
fect, not of judgment, but of principles It cannot 
appear strange, therefore, that, viewing it in this 
light, I should consider such a charge as an as- 
sumption little consistent with }our Lordship's 
character. 

You have published an edition of " Chesterfiekrs 
Letters," in which, doubtless for good reasons, you 
have left out letters comprised in other editions. 
Suppose some critic should examine these omitted 
letters, select from them sentences, or parts of sen- 
tences, containing pointed expressions or facts 
which he may deem important, and then charge 
you with personal motives in such omissions, and 
tampering with truth. AVould you regard this as 
a fair or liberal construction of your motives 1 I 
presume not. Yet a case like this would be par- 
allel to those of several of the examples you have 
brought forward as proofs of such a charge. 

You speak of " embellishments," and seem stren- 
uous to maintain, that I have sought to embellish 
Washington's letters by omissions. The sense in 
which you would have this word understood is not 
very clear. To embellish means to adorn. Your 



44 



first charge of additions might give countenance 
to the idea of embellishments, but you have with- 
drawn that charge, and how omissions are to be 
made ornamental you have not explained. As 
this is merely an opinion, however, a peculiar fan- 
cy of your own not touching facts, I am willing 
you should continue to entertain the opinion upon 
such grounds as are satisfactory to yourself 

It must seem strange to most readers, that your 
Lordship, in a distant country, should be the first 
to discover the partiality, which you allege to have 
been shown to the people of New England in the 
preparation for the press of a selection from Wash- 
ington's papers. Fifteen years have elapsed since 
the publication of that work, and yet no American 
writer in any part of the Union, however much his 
perceptions may have been quickened by local at- 
tachments and predilections, however sensitive to 
the merits of his own State or district in the war 
of the Revolution, has made known such a discov- 
ery, or intimated such a suspicion. How do you 
account for what you assume to be a fact, that you 
are so much better informed on this subject, than 
writers in America, who have every inducement, 
from personal feeling, and from political as well as 
social sympathies, to examine it in all its relations 1 
The simple truth is, that the discovery itself is a 
dream of fancy, and the more thoroughly it is in- 



45 



vestigated, the more completely it will be proved 
to be such. 

You appear to have been beguiled into miscon- 
ceptions by not attending with sufficient care to 
local causes and circumstances, and to the actual 
state of things throughout the country. It hap- 
pened that the war of the Revolution began in New 
England, unexpectedly at the time and without 
preparation on the part of the inhabitants. Soon 
after the affair at Lexington, an army was drawn 
together at Cambridge, which, at the time Washing- 
ton took the command, amounted to about sixteen 
thousand men, two tliirds of whom were from Massa- 
chusetts. How was this army constituted 1 Mostly 
of men who had suddenly left their ploughs at 
the call of their country, and in the expectation 
of a brief term of service. Among the native in- 
habitants there was scarcely a soldier by profession 
in all the Colonies. With very few exceptions, the 
men destined to fill the ranks of the army were 
practical farmers or mechanics. The officers were 
nearly all from the same classes. 

With, these materials an army was to be formed 
and organized, consisting of independent yeomanry, 
volunteers, mostly without military experience or 
discipline; and, when their short term of service 
had expired, a new army was to be raised fioni 
similar materials, and placed under new officers and 



4(5 



new arrangements. All this was to be done, while 
the whole force of the enemy was stationed within 
three miles of "Washington's head-quarters, and sup- 
ported by a strong naval armament in the harbor 
of Boston. 

The embarrassments and difRculties of such an 
undertaking may easily be conceived, especially as 
the civil authority, not yet consolidated, was very 
feeble, and the military power was not recognized 
beyond the camp. No wonder that the Commander- 
in-chief, pressed on all sides by the most harassing 
vexations, should occasionally show impatience, and 
utter loud complaints. The wonder is, that he 
bore himself under them with so much fortitude 
and self-command. You are inclined to attribute 
these vexations to the peculiar character of the 
people, their want of patriotism, and their absorb- 
ing self-interest. But the truth is, they existed in 
the very nature of things, in the state of society 
and the structure of the human mind, precisely 
as they would exist in any country placed under 
the like circumstances. 

If the war had begun in any other part of the 
Union, similar results must have followed. This 
is so obvious to those, who have had opportunities 
of forming a correct judgment from a knowledge 
of all the facts, that no one in iVmerica has ever 
drawn comparisons unfavorable to the exertions of 



New England during that period ; nor lias it been 
intimated that the New England States did not 
contribute, with alacrity and promptness, their full 
proportion of men and means in support of the 
contest throughout the war. 

But it is not my purpose to vindicate a people, 
who need no vindication. Xor should I have 
touched upon the subject, if you had not made 
their supposed want of public virtue and high 
character in some measure the groundwork of your 
charges against my editorial fidelity. I am con- 
vinced, that your premises and conclusions are 
alike erroneous and unjust. I am convinced, that 
no incidents in the history of the period in ques- 
tion have been recorded, which any intelligent man 
in New England would desire to have concealed ; 
and I can affirm, that the idea of such conceal- 
ment never entered my thoughts, till it was sug- 
gested by your suspicions and charges. 

I have thus examined all the parts of your letter 
which relate to my edition of " Washington's Writ- 
ings." The plan upon which the work was execut- 
ed, and the principles adopted in carrying out the 
plan, are so fully explained in my Keply to your 
former strictures, and in the work itself, that no 
further remarks on those topics are required. 

In making a selection from the large mass of 



48 



papers left by Washington, extending over a long 
period, and extremely various in their character, an 
editor could not expect to escape from occasional 
errors of judgment and opinion. Such errors are 
fair subjects of criticism ; but when you assail mo- 
tives, and thus call in question the editor's fidelity 
and rectitude, you give a wide range to a critic's 
privilege. I trust my sensibility to what I esteem 
your unfounded animadversions has not betrayed 
me beyond the proper line of courtesy, nor dimin- 
ished the respect which I have been accustomed to 
entertain for you as an author and a man ; and 
with which 

I have the honor to be, my Lord, 

Your Lordship's most obedient servant, 

JARED SPARKS. 

Cambridge, October 25th, 1852. 



